Grand Canyon
Trip Start
Jan 22, 2006
1
11
156
Trip End
Aug 16, 2006
Grand Canyon National Park,
Arizona,
United States
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Since we're visiting a lot of National Parks on the American leg of the trip, we bought a pass for $50's that will allow us to get in free to all the others. Once we had coughed up the loot, it was a short drive into the park and the first viewing point.
The views were stunning, they absolutely took my breath away. It was difficult to do anything but stand there with my jaw open, but I soon recovered in time to take plenty of video footage to bore everyone with when I come home! As it's Winter here at the moment (or what they count as Winter- still pretty hot if I'm honest), the canyon wasn't busy at all. At the first viewpoint there were a few other people (including a Japanese tour party who spontaneously broke into song!) but for the later viewpoints, we virtually had the place to ourselves.
We took far too many photos and I doubt they'll ever do justice to what we were seeing, but you keep getting to the next viewpoint and seeing yet another stunning view and you feel obliged to take yet another picture of it.
We stayed until the sun went down because as the sun sets you see all sorts of wonderful shadows cast across the canyon. Also they begin to give off a blue and pink glow just as it turns to dusk. It was well below freezing by the time the sun set, however it was more than worth the frostbite! I'll go through anything for a good photo opportunity.
I must admit so far I've been very impressed with the National Parks, America seems to want to overbuild and over commercialise everything. However with these parks they seem to be really determined to keep them unspoilt and preserve them for future generations.
